Week 2. Examining the nuts and bolts of teaching online: The components of an LMS and other popular web applications.

UC Week 3

25th of February2010

This session involved:

Resolving issues which several members of the class had had in setting up their WordPress blogs then introducing the features and options of these blogs.
Investigating the components and features of learning management systems (LMS), especially focusing on Moodle, which is the LMS used by the University of Canberra.
Introducing the concept of personal learning environments (PLEs) and the similarities and differences between LMS and PLEs.
- The “homework” for this session was to use MindMeister to map the features of LMS and PLE.
Discussion of how the tools that you choose for teaching online, and their particular attributes, create opportunities and problems for learning.

Writing for the web

One of the resources which Danny provided for the session was a link to Jakob Nielsen’s Alert Box for October 1, 1997 about how users read on the web. Although very old in Internet terms it has certainly given me some food for thought about how I lay out this blog, and I hope will help me to improve its readability. In particular, I will try to use a less formal writing style, structure the page with useful headings to support the F shaped reading patterns which seems to exist online, bulleted lists, concise phrasing and paragraphs containing just one main idea. I will also attempt to reduce the overall word count although it is not going very well so far…

A 2008 document from the same author gives guidelines for the writing style to be used on the web compared to that which appears in print. This appears to be aimed at authors who are creating websites which appeal to the reader’s desire to ” get things done”. I am not inclined to follow this advice too closely in writing this blog as I think there is still scope for a blog to be narrative and not solely based upon actionable content. I hope that readers agree!

WordPress blog support

The use of the categories and tags features in WordPress was introduced and you can see the results of this in my post of the 25th of February. The idea of using categories and tags to organise information in a blog makes perfect sense to me and fits in very nicely with the way in which I like to order information. This video on the WordPress how-to page explains how to do it nicely. Watch this space as I practice categorising and tagging these posts in a more meaningful way.

I changed the theme of this blog from the default Kubrick theme to the Regulus theme. I didn’t give it much thought atthe time but I quite like the way that it looks now. I do wish the middle pane was a little wider however this seems to be a feature of all the styles for WordPress blogs. There is a very good chance I will change it again!

You can see my profile, and leave comments on this blog. I have explored the myriad of options available in the setup of this blog and what you see (and what I see) is the culmination of this – I think it works.

Personal Learning Environments versus Learning Management Systems (PLE versus LMS)

Instead of talking about these independently I think it is more clear if they are contrasted with each other. As part of this session, each of the class members registered with MindMeister and we created a mind map over the next week which explored the features of each of these ways of thinking about online teaching. Here is a .pdf file of the final mind map PLE_versus_LMS which shows the differences very nicely.

Apart from the physical characteristics of a LMS, the pedagogical characteristics are worth considering. The LMS, by its very nature, is centred around the institution or organisation which is controlling the learning material being delivered to the learner. There is no scope for the learner to influence the way that it looks or works. This is in contrast to the concept of a PLE which is constructed by the learner and can contain whatever they want.

I think that the most distinct difference is the fundamental institution/learner centred divide which appears between a PLE and an LMS. Other important differences are:

A PLE can evolve over time in response to the learners needs and ways of learning-this is the embodiment of learner centred education.
A PLE will travel with the student rather than reside with the institution-it is always accessible even after graduation etc.
A PLE encourages students to work collaboratively, and to gather information and solve problems using their network of contacts.
A learner will need to have skills in developing the PLE for this to be effective-this may not be suitable for every learner. An LMS is likely to have been designed by experts in the field and should have some degree of quality assurance
Both a PLE and an LMS may access external resources such as video and photo sharing websites, collaborative writing websites and the whole range of Web 2.0 services.
A LMS can contain links to other organisation based applications and serviceswhich can streamline learning
A LMS can facilitate assessment, discussion, and feedback amongst learners in a structured way

PLE

Apparently there are seven things you should know about a PLE ; one of the most useful things that I learned (although not one of the seven) is the definition of a PLE:

The term personal learning environment (PLE) describes the tools, communities, and services that constitute the individual educational platforms that learners use to direct their own learning and pursue educational goals. PLEs represent a shift away from the model in which students consume information through independent channels such as the library, a textbook, or an LMS, moving instead to a model where students draw connections from a growing matrix of resources that they select and organize. The use of PLEs may herald a greater emphasis on the role that metacognition plays in learning, enabling students to actively consider and reflect upon the specific tools and resources that lead to a deeper engagement with content to facilitate their learning.

I think that’s pretty clear! But, as I mentioned above, it does rely a lot upon the student being able to do this in the first place. I am not sure that the students with which I currently interact would be able to do this to a degree which will replace an LMS. I would like to think that my students would use the LMS which I provide to them as part of their PLE. There is a lot more preparation required before this becomes a standard way of operating in higher education, for both students and teachers.

This is all summed up nicely in the “seventh thing” which describes the implications of PLE on teaching and learning:

In an environment where information is ubiquitous and needs only to be located, there is a greater premium on skills that support fast and accurate access to information and on the ability to assess that information. In this regard, teaching is less a matter of data transmission and more a collaborative exercise in collection, orchestration, remixing, and integration of data into knowledge building. The goal for the student shifts from a need to collect information to a need to draw connections from it—to acquire it, disseminate it, and collaborate in its use.

LMS

In a similar style, according to the address of this link, there are 11 things to consider before choosing an LMS, however the title of the page is “10 Things to Consider Before Choosing an LMS” which contains a list of 9 things to consider before choosing an LMS (there is no number seven!). Clear?

This document provides a list of the technical features which should be considered before choosing an LMS. Thankfully, at UC, somebody else has already done this and has implemented Moodle – apparently it ticks all of these boxes well. It seems to work! Although I find myself spending a lot of time on some of the detail aspects of setting up and operating Moodle sites, I’m getting much better at it and have received good feedback from my students about their ease of use. There is a good sense of satisfaction when it works well.

Moodle

The first thing I noticed when looking at the Moodle website is that they describe themselves as a content management system (CMS) as well as a learning management system (LMS). This is an important semantic difference as Moodle are obviously setting themselves up to manage a wide range of content, not just that which is used for learning; this makes sense really as it is a robust framework for organising pretty much anything that you want.

I’ve been using Moodle now for over a year and am conversant with most of its functions having developed six unit sites; it is also used for this course. They are standard Moodle sites that looks just like all the other Moodle sites at UC – they are generally quite good I think, and it is “familiar” to anyone who has used other Web 2.0 sites. They don’t jump out as anything particularly special, but are solid and usable with some nice design features: see the screenshot in my previous post for example.

I personally prefer the “UC stretch theme” and set up all my Moodle pages this way – I like having a bit more space in the middle pane and don’t like the wasted space on either side in the standard theme. See the screenshot below for one of my units (I must remember that the screenshots show everything you’re working on!). I see that Danny has changed the site for this unit to this theme since I took a screenshot of it for the previous post.

I recently made some other layout changes to the site and you can see that I am seeking student feedback on these (two likes and no hate so far ).

Blog by Ben